Jill provides a safe, nurturing and confidential environment for you to explore your emotions, challenges and goals. She can help you to develop a deeper understanding of your feelings, beliefs and behaviour patterns.

Jill uses effective therapeutic appraoches to help you to let go of difficult emotions, change limiting patterns and experience lasting change. She also helps you to explore your natural strengths and potential and to experience a greater degree of fulfilment and balance in your life. Jill can help with:

Anxiety, fears and panic attacks

Depression

Trauma (PTSD and childhood trauma)

Insomnia

Stress management

Burnout and coping with illness or chronic pain

Low self-confidence / self-esteem

Relationship issues

Grief and loss

Career/life transition

Pre and postnatal depression and anxiety

Jill is an experienced Clinical Psychologist, with extensive training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness-Based approaches, therapies for trauma resolution and emotional regulation, such as EMDR and EFT, Attachment-based Therapies and Transpersonal Psychology, which focuses on health, growth and human potential and is holistic in approach. Jill's approach is integrative and holistic and aims to facilitate self-awareness, healing, growth, inner transformation and behavioural change. Therapy is tailored to your needs and may draw from a range of the following approaches:

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy involves exploring the thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviour patterns behind any psychological difficulties. In essence it focuses on helping you to understand, manage and change your thoughts and behaviours and regulate your emotions. Through the process of therapy you can learn to replace negative or self-limiting thinking patterns with more positive and constructive ones, and as a consequence, start to feel better about yourself.

An integral part of CBT is teaching you practical skills and techniques to help you to overcome problems. CBT can be very effective for reducing stress and teaching you more effective coping strategies. Many different techniques are utilsed, depending on the type of problem being experienced. These include:

Training in recognising and challenging negative thoughts, beliefs and schemas

Techniques to help you think more optimistically

Stress management techniques

Conflict resolution and assertiveness training

Problem solving and goal setting techniques

Desensitisation and exposure techniques

Relaxation therapy and breathing retraining

Experiential techniques such as role playing and guided imagery

Emotion regulation skills

EMDR

EMDR stands for "eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing". It is a procedure to help you reduce the impact of distressing or traumatic experiences from the past that intrude on your present-day life. Even though the distressing or traumatic event may have happened many months or years ago, you may still feel its impact in your daily life through symptoms such as intrusive memories, emotional flooding, nightmares, anxiety, numbing, low self-esteem and difficulty getting on with your life. EMDR has also been used to help people deal with anxiety and panic, grief, reactions to physical illness, and other conditions where strong emotions are associated with life experiences.

There are 8 phases of treatment, including general assessment, preparation, assessment of targeted memories, desensitisation, body scan, closure and re-evaluation. 'Processing' does not mean talking about the event, it is a physiologically based therapy using eye movements (similar to what occurs naturally during REM or rapid eye movement sleep), that helps the brain to properly 'digest or process' the distressing experience. We know that when someone becomes very distressed, their brain cannot process the information in the normal way and one event can become 'frozen in time'. EMDR seems to have a direct effect on the way the brain processes information, so that normal processing is resumed after EMDR, and the person no longer relives the sounds, images and feelings when the event is brought to mind. You may still remember what has happened but with less distress and you will be able to think differently about yourself in relation to the event.

Mindfulness-Based Therapy

Mindfulness-Based approaches to therapy incorporate mindfulness skills and mindfulness meditation with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based form of therapy that incorporates both mindfulness-based techniques and values-oriented behavioural strategies. ACT helps you to develop a different approach to your painful thoughts and feelings, through learning a wide range of mindfulness skills. When you practice these skills on a regular basis, unpleasant thoughts and emotions have much less impact on you. ACT helps you to live more in the 'present' moment and have more vitality.

ACT also helps you to create a fulfilling and meaningful life that is guided by your deepest values. An important focus is to help you to identify what your core values are, and to help you take action consistent with those values. ACT is a practical and experiential approach to therapy. Through mindfulness skills and behavioural strategies, you learn how to take positive and meaningful action, without being overwhelmed or limited by negativfe thoughts, emotions, images of memories.

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology includes and builds on traditional approaches to psychology. It focuses on health, growth and human potential. It is holistic in approach and encourages the balanced development of the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical, social and creative expression aspects of a person's life. Transpersonal psychology embraces our humanity and sees our personality as the vehicle or vessel through which the soul or spirit can navigate the world. It recognises our desire for meaning, wholeness and connection with our spiritual nature.

Transpersonal Counselling involves supporting you to develop at both a personal and spiritual level, with the aim of bringing about self-awareness, healing, growth and inner transformation. It recognises different states of consciousness and can include exploring deeper aspects of your personality or psyche. It can be beneficial for a whole range of difficulties, including stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, life transitions, loss of meaning and direction and issues related to sense of identity. It can also help you to:

Transpersonal Counselling involves a holistic exploration of the issues and may include more traditional approaches to psychology such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, however it may also involve mindfulness training, meditation and guided visualisation, creative expression, exploration of spiritual beliefs, exploration of different aspects of self and emotional healing techniques.

Contact Jill

Please contact Jill if you have any questions, or if you would like to make an appointment.